1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the display of information by electronic data processing systems and in particular to an electronic data processing system that accentuates displayed objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many data processing systems provide a user interface that can accentuate certain, but not all, display objects that are presented to the user. Examples of accentuated display objects include: search terms within text, negative numbers, misspelled words within text as determined by a spellchecking procedure, and unavailable system resources in a list of data processing system resources.
Accentuation may also be called highlighting or emphasis. Accentuation of displayed objects may be provided in different manners on different data processing systems. On a TTL character mode monochrome display monitor displaying normal intensity display objects such as letters, numbers and other displayable characters, the display of accentuated display objects may include high intensity or bold, reverse video, a different font such as an italic font, or blinking. On a graphical display, accentuation may be similarly applied to icons and other graphical display objects. On a color display, accentuation of display objects may additionally include a higher intensity of the same color in which the unaccentuated display objects are presented, a different color, or a different color background.
The accentuation examples listed above may, but are not required to be, binary: either a word is misspelled or it is not. In binary accentuation decisions, data processing systems or applications may accentuate one class of display objects. Some applications allow a customized selection of the class of display objects to be accentuated. For example, an application showing accounting transactions may allow the user to select whether debit entries or credit entries are accentuated. Additionally, accentuation may be applied where more than two classes of display objects are available for accentuation: a text document may contain not only misspelled words and correctly spelled words but also numbers.
Accentuation may be enabled so that the accentuated display objects are differentiated from the remaining display objects. However, when a majority of the display objects are accentuated, an unfortunate "dazzle" effect may be created. When a majority of the display objects are accentuated, the stand-out effect of the accentuation may be substantially lessened. Furthermore, the unaccentuated minority of the display objects may be overshadowed. A user may prefer to accentuate relatively less frequently occurring classes of display objects to minimize the "dazzle" effect. Alternatively, a user may prefer to accentuate relatively more frequently occurring classes of display objects to take advantage of the "dazzle" effect.
Manual user selection may allow the user to redesignate the accentuation to the preferred relatively less common or more common class of display object. However, repeated manual user selection may be necessary whenever the relative frequency of occurrence of display objects changes. Such repeated user selection may inconvenience a user. A method and apparatus are desired in which a data processing system may accentuate a class of display objects, in response to the relative frequency of occurrence of the class of display objects, with a minimum of user intervention.